Retention and recruitment of nurses across the nation is something health systems and hospitals continue to struggle to maintain. It's an ongoing issue that calls for a "great reevaluation," Tamera Rosenbaum, MSN, RN, the chief nursing officer at the University of Colorado Health's Memorial Hospital in Colorado Springs, told Fox 21 News.
"Nurses are reevaluating whether this career choice is for them just based on all of the stressors that we had during the pandemic," she told the station.
It's because of this that she is leading UCHealth toward a path that will reevaluate the incentives it provides for attracting and retaining its own nursing staff.
Ms. Rosenbaum said to Fox 21 that UCHealth is most in need of operating room nurses or perioperative nurses. Since the positions are not usually filled by new nurses, the system has decided to offer training to make it available to new graduates, so they can fill the roles. It is also looking at higher nurse-to-patient ratios and shifting some of the nursing workload to other healthcare staff, including patient care assistants and patient technicians.
Notably, education in nursing schools has also been under strain, both due to high costs of student loans and the fact that nurses who go on to teach in higher education typically receive much less pay. To ease at least one of those barriers, UCHealth is also offering continuing education benefits with 100 percent of tuition covered to its staff who receive specific University of Colorado health-centric degrees.
"We've looked at 'what can we do to make sure that our nurses are operating at the top of their scope,'" Ms. Rosenbaum told Fox 21.